


All the living are dead

by Qpenguin98



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Dissociation, Family, Found Family, Future Fic, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, after the war, lots of family feelings, they buy a house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 12:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: When the bulk of the war is over, and they’re allowed to go home, it’s four years after they first got sucked into space.Keith isn’t sure how to feel about it.





	All the living are dead

When the bulk of the war is over, and they’re allowed to go home, it’s four years after they first got sucked into space.

Keith isn’t sure how to feel about it.

Everyone is so excited to go home, _home_ , to their families and houses and people that love them.

The idea’s a little sickening to him.

This castle is the first place that felt like home. His room, Lance’s room, the plushy room with all the couches and pillows, the dining room, Red’s hanger, Red.

Letting that go feels.

Wrong.

Lance is jittery, practically bouncing off the walls with the idea of seeing his family again, introducing all of them to Keith.

Pidge has Matt and their dad back, found two years from each other, and both of them incredibly exasperated that Pidge was out in space looking for them. All three of them are ready to get back to Colleen.

Shiro hasn’t seen his mom in nearly six years, and he’s worried that she won’t even recognize him.

Hunk’s a little desperate to have actual solid ground under him again and to see his moms, his not so little anymore sister, and all the things that made home home.

Keith wants things to stay the same. Sure, having his friends almost die right in front of him multiple times is scary and sickening, but he’s here together with all of them. When they get back to earth, things will go back to “normal,” and he won’t see anyone again.

He’s camped himself in one of the star rooms, watching as the stars around him start seeming more familiar. They’ve made it to the milky way then. He curls up around his knees.

“Hey,” Lance calls from behind him. There’s a couple footsteps and then he sits next to Keith. “Allura says we should make it to Earth in the next day or two.”

He hums out an answer, still staring up at the sky. Lance nudges his shoulder.

“You okay? You’ve been kinda quiet since we found out we were going home.”

“I’m okay,” he mumbles. “Just nervous.”

“What about?”

“Your family for one.”

Lance scoffs. “They’re gonna love you, you know that. You and Anna will have a field day telling each other all the embarrassing stories about me that you know. My mom loves anyone her kids do, so you don’t even have to worry about her.”

“I’m part of the reason you disappeared for four years.”

“Keith,” Lance says firmly beside him, and Keith ducks his head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that we won and everyone is, for the most part, safe.”

Keith chances a glance at the scar running up from Lance’s chest to his neck, and Lance frowns.

“Nope, nope we’re not focusing on that. And anyways, if you’re gonna feel bad about that, I get to feel bad about your leg.”

Pidge and Hunk’s tech sits where his left leg used to be, white and light blue from the knee down. He furrows his brow. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“And neither was this. Stop worrying.”

He sighs, leaning back on his hands, kicking his legs out. “It’s not just that.”

Lance rests his weight in his shoulder, nodding.

“It’s just… you all have families that you’re going back to and I don’t. And that’s fine, I’m not upset about it.”

“Then what?”

“It’s stupid.”

“We’re past caring about whether it’s stupid or not, aren’t we? Nothing you’re worried about is stupid.”

“We’ve all been together for four years, and it’s not gonna matter once we’re back on Earth. You’re all going back to your families, and I’m just—”

“Hey, whoa, you’re coming with me back to my family, no one’s leaving you behind. If I wasn’t Shiro and Hunk and Pidge would gladly take you with them to their homes.”

“It’s not the same. I’m not a _part_ of that. It’s like I’m… I don’t know, placeholder family? I’m not actual family, and once we’re back on Earth and everyone’s with their actual family, no one’s going to care anymore.”

Lance is quiet next to him, and Keith fidgets.

“Is that what you think?” he finally says. Keith nods.

“You think just because we’re going back home, we’ll stop caring about you.” It’s not a question. “What, has this four years meant nothing to you?”

Keith looks at Lance, really looks it him. He’s angry, face drawn tight.

“Of _course_ it wasn’t nothing. This is the first place that felt like home. This is the closest thing to family I’ve ever had.”

“Then why do you think we’d just leave you?!” Lance is standing now, hands moving while he talks. This is why Keith didn’t want to talk about this. “Did Pidge do that when we got Matt and Sam back?”

“N-no, of course they didn’t—”

“Then why the hell would anything change now?”

“Because that’s what happens, Lance! People care when it’s convenient, and the minute there’s a chance, they leave, it’s what they do. And I can’t do that. I care about all of you so, so, so much. And I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I don’t know if everyone’s safe, if I can’t hear Hunk snoring through the wall, or Shiro pacing the hallways, or Pidge messing with something at three in the fucking morning, or even you. If I can’t see you, if I can’t look at you and touch you I won’t know that you’re okay, and when we all split up to go find our families or whatever the fuck is gonna happen once we’re actually on Earth, I won’t know that everyone’s okay, and I- I can’t—”

He stood up sometime during his rant, and he’s gripping at his head with shaking hands.

Lance drags his hands down his face and mumbles out a curse. “Keith, that’s not going to happen. No one’s leaving you behind, okay? Once everyone’s met back up with their families, you think we’re not gonna get back together? I think we’re a little past that. We’ve lived in close quarters with each other for four years, it’d be too weird to be states apart from each other.”

Lance takes Keith’s hands in his and squeezes. “You’re not placeholder family, or whatever else you think you are. You’re real family. We’re all family, okay?”

He nods, and Lance pulls him into a proper hug. “Good. Don’t think we’re all gonna forget about you just because we’re back on Earth. We all spent four years together. That’s a lot of something that isn’t going away.”

“Okay.”

They walk back to Lance’s room together, and Keith falls asleep in the dim blue light of the castle for the last time.

\---

The next day moves by in a rush. They make it to Earth at around two in the afternoon, and Allura and Shiro hail a frequency with the Garrison. The rest of the paladins stand behind them, along with Matt, Sam, and Coran. They’re accepted into the atmosphere and brought in for questioning.

Keith’s ready to punch something by the time the Garrison’s done with them. Question after question after question, he just wants to see Lance.

Him and Shiro get done first, Shiro because they already partly knew what happened to him, and Keith because he stopped responding correctly about halfway through.

Too many stupid questions for him to process.

“Hey,” Shiro says as he sits next to him in the waiting room. “You okay?”

He shakes his head, arms crossed. “They just kept asking the same things over and over. I don’t want to be here, this place can go fuck itself.”

Shiro snorts. “Tell me about it. All they wanted to do was poke at the arm and ask exactly what kind of stuff they did to me while I was captured.”

Keith winces. Shiro doesn’t like to talk about it on a good day, and by the looks of it, today is not turning out to be a good day.

“I’m glad I wore pants that cover the leg,” he tries out.

“How is that, by the way?” Shiro takes this opportunity to turn the conversation back to Keith, which he doesn’t really appreciate, but Shiro could use it more than him.

He shrugs. “Fine. Goes on in the morning, comes off at night. Hurts sometimes. Brain thinks it’s there when it’s not. The usual.”

Shiro opens his mouth to say something, but Hunk enters the waiting room they’re in. He doesn’t look very happy.

“They ask you about our Galra prison time?” Hunk waves a hand at Keith, and his shoulders stiffen.

“No,” he says, tapping his flesh foot on the ground anxiously. “Didn’t get that far. They kept repeating questions, or at least it felt like it, so I stopped answering. They let me leave early.”

Hunk and Keith spent a week or two in a Galra prison about a year and a half in. Keith can never remember how long it actually was. It might have been three weeks. His memory’s a little fuzzy.

Hunk groans and covers his face in his hands. “I should have done that. They wanted to know _everything._ ”

Keith shudders as Hunk sits next to him on the couch he’s on. Now isn’t the place to start thinking about that. Think of something else, Keith. Something funny.

“Remember when we met Mothman in prison?”

Hunk smiles. “Yeah, and I remember you being really upset about not having any cameras.”

“Meeting your childhood hero does things to you, Hunk.”

Pidge shuffles their way in, followed by Matt and their dad. Figures they would wait for the two of them. “What’s all this about childhood heroes?”

“Prison Mothman,” Shiro says blandly.

“Oh yeah. Still wish you would’ve gotten a picture.”

“Hey, don’t blame us for not having our helmets.”

“Nah, that’s all me,” Lance says as he walks in. He looks tired, and Keith frowns.

“Again, that’s not your fault.”

Lance snorts. “According to my interrogator, it’s all my fault.”

“My boy—,” Sam starts, but Lance barrels over him.

“Allura and Coran got ‘whisked away’ to diplomatic stuff, so I guess we’re free to go.”

“No goodbye?” Pidge looks upset.

“Not like it’s forever. And we’ve still got our communicators. They can’t split us up that easy.”

Keith is still trying to figure out what he means by “all his fault” as everyone stands to leave. He trails next to Lance, who looks like he’s debating something.

The castleship is eerily quiet as everyone gathers their things to leave. They’re taking the lions to their families. It’s faster, and Pidge has equipped them all with the cloaking device they made. Keith gets a flash of panic that he’s never going to see this place again, and he squeezes Lance’s hand that he doesn’t remember grabbing.

There’s a lot of hugging, and Hunk cries a little, along with Pidge, as they all cling to each other for the last time in a while. They’re not going to be just a door away anymore. They’re states, countries away.

“Not forever,” Shiro says as he pulls out of a hug with Keith.

“Say hi to your mom for me?”

He smiles. “Yeah. She’ll be glad to hear about you.”

He always liked Shiro’s mom, and he hopes she’ll take her son coming home after being dead for six years okay.

Once goodbyes are over, Keith and Lance start flying in the direction of Lance’s house. The coms are surprisingly quiet. He expected them all to be chatting with each other on the way to their homes. Keith has a private link open with Lance, just so they can stay connected, but Lance is uncomfortably quiet.

“Everything okay?”

Lance jumps a little, and meets Keith’s eyes through their video link. “Um, of course everything’s okay? We’re going home to see my family, what could be better?”

“You said that the person you talked to blamed you for everything that happened to us?”

“Oh that? It’s nothing. Just some classic government scapegoating. You know how it is.”

“You don’t believe them, right?”

Lance doesn’t say anything.

“Lance—”

“Look. If I hadn’t bonded with Blue,” he hears a quiet apology aimed at Lance’s lion, ”then maybe none of the terrible stuff that happened to us would have happened. You wouldn’t have lost your leg, you and Hunk wouldn’t have been captured, Pidge would still have their eye, Shiro wouldn’t have kept disappearing, and I probably wouldn’t have almost died like twelve times.”

Keith wants to go back to the Garrison and punch whoever told Lance this was his fault through the wall. “That’s not your fault.”

“But—”

“No, listen. You didn’t even know where Blue was before I showed you, so it could just as well be my fault. And none of you would’ve been out in the desert if Shiro hadn’t crashed that night, so blame him. Fuck, blame the fucking Garrison for sending the three of them up there and covering the whole thing up! We saved the universe, Lance. We saved planets and people, your family, everyone on the castleship’s family, even the fuckers at the Garrison. We couldn’t have if you hadn’t taken all of us up there with Blue.”

Lance has ducked his head, and Keith is gripping at the handles too hard.

“Thanks,” Lance mumbles quietly.

“So, uh.” Keith doesn’t really know where to go from here. “Tell me who everyone in your family is? I don’t know everyone’s names.”

Lance brightens up a bit. “Okay, so you already know my immediate family, but let’s go over it again. My mom’s name is Irene, my dad’s name is David. Anna’s my older sister, and Sammi and Charlie are the twins. My grandparents are Desi and Luis on my dad’s side, and you probably won’t meet the ones on my mom’s side because we don’t really talk to them.”

He keeps listing names, and Keith tries to keep them all straight, but there’s just so many. He figures he’ll probably be safe with just immediate family, it’s not like they’ll all be over at the same time.

They pass over the ocean, and Keith stops listening entirely and stares. He’s never been to the ocean, and it’s so blue. Lance’s eyes are that color, that dark blue green that he wants to drown in.

“Keith?”

He snaps his eyes to Lance, who’s smiling at him.

“Never seen the ocean?”

He shakes his head numbly and goes back to looking at it.

“My parents live by it, so it’ll be easy to walk down to the beach sometime. That’s where we’re hiding the lions, a cave on the beach. No one ever went there, so it’s perfect.”

Lance starts pulling Blue down, and Keith follows. The cave is hidden, surrounded by jagged rocks on one side and ocean water on the other. It’s dark inside, and they turn off the cloaking devices.

The sand inside is damp, and Keith reaches down to touch it once he’s out of Red. Lance comes up next to him. “You want to leave our stuff here and come get it later?”

He nods. “We should bring something, though. So they know we’re not making anything up.”

Lance holds up his bayard and Keith nods. Lance leads them out of the cave, and Keith is glad his boots are waterproof. Lance has no such luck.

The beach is cold, deserted. The ocean’s still blue, and he stares at it as they walk. A shiver runs through his body at the wind, and Lance looks at him.

“Why didn’t you grab your jacket?”

“It’s Cuba, I thought it’d be warm.”

“It’s not always warm here, dummy.” Lance shucks off his jacket and hands it to him. “Come on, it’ll be warmer once we get there.”

He pulls on the well worn jacket, the same one Lance wore on the night they found Shiro. It’s warm, soft on his arms.

The trek across the beach doesn’t take long, sadly, and then they’re walking up a hill onto a small road. There’s houses every now and then, not too far apart, but enough to be comfortable. Lance is fidgeting next to him, nervously listing off the families that live in the houses. His breath hitches as he stops in front of a gate, wooden and splintering. There’s a couple cars in the driveway, and Keith can see people moving around inside.

“This is it,” Lance says quietly beside him.

Keith looks at him, and Lance looks terrified.

“What’s wrong?” Keith grabs his hand and Lance squeezes it tightly, staring at the gate.

“What if they don’t want to see me?”

“Lance.”

“No really! What if they’ve come to terms with me being gone, and- and—”

Keith kisses him gently. “You know that’s not true. Come on. You’ve fought warships full of Galra. Don’t give up now.”

Lance takes a deep breath, then another, and pushes the gate open. It creaks, and Keith can see the way his lip wobbles. He keeps a tight grip on his hand as they walk, climbing up steps until they’re at a door. Lance knocks with a shaking fist.

Something gets called out that Keith can’t really decipher but Lance has tears in his eyes, so it must be his mom talking.

The door opens.

The woman at the door is still talking behind her, not quite looking at the people in front of her, and when she fully turns, Keith watches as recognition floods her features.

“Lance?” She asks quiet, shaky.

“Mom,” Lance sobs out, and Keith lets go of his hand so he can hug her. There’s something lodged in his throat as he watches Irene grip at her son with trembling fingers. She’s mumbling thing’s too quiet for him to hear, and Lance is trying to hide his face in her shoulder, back bent down so he can reach her height.

It’s a while before they part, and Keith resolutely keeps his eyes dry. His mom touches the scar running up his neck and a terrified look crosses her face.

“Lance, honey, what happened to you?”

“Space happened,” he says, smile wobbly. “So much happened and I am so, so sorry it took so long to get home.”

“The Garrison said you—,” she cuts off, scrubbing at her face with her hands before gripping at his shoulders. “They said that there was an accident with a meteor and that—”

Keith isn’t surprised. The Garrison never knew how to handle anything that wasn’t textbook protocol. They kicked him out with no family, no place to go. He’s wondered what they told their families, and knowing they what they said doesn’t make it better.

He’s zoned out a bit, biting his lip and staring at the two of them reunite. Lance touches his shoulder and he jumps out of his daze.

“Mom, this is Keith, my,” he pauses to breathe. “My boyfriend.”

She furrows his brows, and Keith is ready to defend him, and then she laughs. “Is this the same Keith from the Garrison?”

He’s at a loss. Had Lance talked about him to his family before? Lance’s face is turning red.

“Uh, yeah, same Keith.”

She takes Keith’s hand in hers and he’s not really sure what to do here. “We used to hear all about you when he called home.”

Keith shoots Lance a look, and Lance is skillfully avoiding eye contact. “You never told me you talked about me to your family.”

“Never seemed relevant.”

Keith turns back to Irene. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. McClain.”

“Please, call me Irene.” Her smile is warm as she pulls him into a hug. This is foreign territory to him, mom hugs, but it feels safe and warm, so he lets himself enjoy it, closing his eyes.

He pulls out of it first, not really sure how welcome he is at the moment. She looks between the two of them for a moment, staring at the little scars dotting the visible parts of their bodies and frowns.

“You should come in. Anna’s home, and I think everyone will want to know where you’ve been.”

Lance brightens at his sister’s name. She leads them inside, and Keith tries to ignore the gnawing anxiety in his stomach.

She leads them into the living room, where a cluster of people are sitting around each other. A girl that must be Anna is sitting between two younger children, Sammi and Charlie. A man Keith thinks is Lance’s dad, David, is sitting in a couch corner on his computer. The television plays idly in the background.

Lance grips at Keith’s hand again, squeezing so tightly that it hurts, but he doesn’t try to pull his hand away. It grounds him, touching another person.

Anna looks up first, and her face pales. “Lance?”

The other three’s heads snap up at the same time, and Lance gives a small, awkward wave.

His dad gets up, pulls him into a hug, and Keith lets go of his hand again, stepping back. Irene touches his shoulder, and he jumps, looking at her.

“I don’t know what you’ve gone through, but I’m so grateful to you for bringing him home.”

His eyes water and his vision gets blurry, and before he can cry in front of these people he’s just met, he turns and leaves. This is Lance’s time, time to reunite with his family, he doesn’t need to be here.

The cool outside air hits him in the face and he sits on the steps, pressing his head to his knees.

In the back of his mind, he wonders how the others are doing, if being with their families is going better for them. This isn’t his family, he hasn’t had one of those in years, and he doesn’t need to intrude on Lance’s. He did that enough to Shiro and his mom when he was younger.

He’s not sure how long he’s out there, but Lance comes out eventually, sits down next to him. His face is puffy, and Keith feels guilty.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

“They all want to meet you.”

He shakes his head, sucking in a deep breath.

“Keith, what’s wrong?”

“It’s- it’s your family, I don’t want to—”

“I can’t do this alone.”

Keith looks at him, and Lance looks almost scared. “I haven’t told them what happened yet, and I can’t do it without you. Please. Please come back inside.”

He nods a couple times before standing up, following Lance back inside.

The atmosphere is heavy, and they sit in the empty spots on the couch. Sammi comes up to them and sits herself on Lance’s lap. He laughs.

“You’ve gotten so much bigger.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you’re gone for four years.”

The room gets even heavier, and Keith has the urge to move. His leg is acting up, and the best way to get it to stop is the get up. Lance asked him to stay for this, though, so he grits his teeth and deals.

“What happened?” Anna asks from her spot across the room. She looks distrustful of Keith, and he doesn’t blame her.

“Do you remember the Kerberos mission?” Oh, Keith thinks. Lance is starting from the very beginning.

“Yes, it was all over the news,” his dad says.

“They didn’t crash. They were taken by aliens. The Galra.”

“Lance, don’t lie to us.”

“I’m not! Keith, do you still have that picture of all of us?”

He pulls out the communicators Pidge and Hunk built for them. They’re similar to phones, but better, lighter. He finds the picture of all of them, with Matt and Sam, and hands it to Lance.

“That’s the crew.” He points to Shiro and the Holts. His mom sucks in a gasp, and his dad’s brows furrow.

“So they get captured, and then a year later, Shiro escapes. He crashes on Earth, and me, Hunk, and Pidge,” he stops to point Pidge out in the picture,” who was Matt and Sam’s family, sneak out of the Garrison to go check it out. Keith is already there, and we all rescue him from the Garrison scientists together.”

“No,” Keith says, “you guys butt in on my rescue attempt and weighed down my bike.”

“Details, mullet, we don’t need all of them. We all go back to Keith’s ridiculous shack in the middle of the desert- oh hey, do you want to get some stuff from there later?”

“Lance, I’m pretty sure you should finish telling your family what we did the last four years.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. So Keith’s all weird about this energy in the middle of the desert, which turned out to be this giant mechanical lion, Blue.” He pulls out his own communicator and show them a picture of her.

“She’s a part of this super weapon, Voltron, which I didn’t know, but she chose me to pilot her, and the five of us end up in space, going through a wormhole to get away from a Galra ship, and ending up at this castle on an alien planet. That’s where we met Allura and Coran,” he points them out in the group picture.

“They’re the last of the alien race Alteans, and they’ve been literally frozen in sleep for ten-thousand years. They show us where the rest of the lions are, and we go get them. Keith here got Red.”

He shows them a picture of her, and Keith wonders if he has pictures of all the lions.

“The five lions form this giant robot guy Voltron, which is the only thing that can fight the Galra empire. So now we’re the universe’s only hope, and we’re super obligated to stay and save everyone, so we do.”

“You fought in an intergalactic war?” Sammi asks from his lap.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was pretty dangerous sometimes, but we’re all okay. A little older and we’ve got some scars, but we’re okay.”

Sammi pokes the one coming up from his shirt. “Where’s this one come from?”

Lance’s smile wavers. “I’ll tell you later, when everything calms down, okay?”

She nods enthusiastically.

“Lance,” Irene says. “Are you telling us that- that you’ve been fighting an alien war for the last four years?”

“Yes.” Lance’s face falls. “And we won. We won and we can finally be home again.”

Pain shoots up the spot where his leg used to be, and Keith doubles over, clutching at the prosthetic.

“Babe?”

“Leg,” he grits out. “Hurts a little, it’s fine.”

“Walk around pain or take it off pain?”

It was walk around pain, but now he’s not so sure. He digs his fingers into the metal, wanting it to give under his nails, to warp and twist and break off just like the real one.

“Take it off pain, got it. Sammi, sweetie, can you get down for a sec?”

She hops off, a little afraid, and Keith worries he’s ruining things. Lance swats his hands away and takes off his boot to shove up his pant leg. There’s a couple shocked gasps from the room, but he ignores them, trying to focus on what Lance is doing. He presses a couple things, and he bites his tongue to keep quiet as it disconnects from the nerves. The pressure is gone, and the pain goes down to a gentle throb, something much more manageable. The leg sits to the side with his boot, and he pulls the pant leg back down.

Anna is staring at the prosthetic with a mix of awe and horror. Charlie, who’s been sitting next to them on the floor, is clearing trying not to reach out and touch it.

“Hey,” Lance runs a hand over his face. “You good? Do you need me to call Shiro?”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. It’s good now.” Lance doesn’t look convinced. “Show them your bayard?”

“What’s a bayard?” Sammi and Charlie ask at the same time.

Lance unclips his bayard from his belt and activates it. The familiar gun rests in his hands, and his parents look horrified.

“It takes the shape of what you work with best. Keith’s turns into a sword.”

“What’s that scar from,” Ana asks, jaw tight. “Why is his leg gone?”

“Anna—”

“Why’d the Garrison say you all died? They didn’t even mention him!” She gestures at Keith wildly. “Why the hell didn’t you try to contact us?!”

Lance’s eyes are watering, and Keith tries to control his breathing. He rubs his thumb over Lance’s knuckles and takes over.

“The Garrison said they died because it’s a shithole that can’t handle anything out of the ordinary.” There’s little kids here, but that’s never stopped them before. “You think they wanted to explain to the entire world that three of their students and the pilot who’s supposed to be dead got pulled into space by a giant alien robot lion? I wasn’t mentioned because when Shiro ‘died’ I freaked out and they booted me, with absolutely no place to go to, so I      ended up in a shack in the desert thinking I was crazy because of the energy coming from Blue.”

Anna looks a little apologetic, but he’s not done. “Lance wanted to go home so many times, but we had a responsibility to the entire goddamn universe as the only people capable of piloting the lions. We couldn’t contact you because we were too far out of range. Believe me, they tried multiple times to get a signal back.”

Sammi is hugging Lance’s legs now, and he knows he shouldn’t say anything about his leg or Lance’s scar, but he just can’t help himself. “My leg is gone because I ended up in a Galra prison with Hunk and it broke. The druids wanted to know exactly how fucked up it could get before coming off, and the answer was very fucked up. Lance has that scar because I- I wasn’t fast enough to block a sword that ripped up his ribs and throat and he almost—”

Lance clamps a hand over his mouth before he can say it, and Keith squeezes his eyes shut. He shouldn’t have said anything. That’s enough nightmare material for weeks, and Keith just gave it up freely. Lance pulls his hand away, and Keith mumbles his apologies.

Anna’s crying now, and Keith bites his lip. Charlie has taken hold of Lance’s other leg, and he wishes his leg weren’t hurting so much so that he could just leave again.

“We’re all okay,” Lance tries. “None of us are dead, and we’re all back with our families right now. We’re not leaving again.”

“You’re staying here, right?” His mom looks hopeful.

“For a little while, if you’ll let us.” Keith isn’t quite sure he’s welcome anymore after the stunt he just pulled, but if Lance still wants him here, he’ll stay.

“Of course! We can’t turn you out. Either of you.” Anna’s voice is watery. “Your room’s still the same.”

“It’s almost dinner,” his dad says. “What do you want to eat your first night back?”

Keith knows what he’s going to say before he says it. “Pizza?”

Everyone laughs, and it feels okay for a moment.

“Yeah,” his mom says. “Let’s get pizza.”

“We can go get it,” Keith suggests. “We have to pick our things up from the lions still, anyways.”

“Keith, we don’t have any money. And your leg’s acting up.”

“It’s fine now. Walk around pain. I still want to see where you grew up.”

“We’ve got some money,” Irene says, tuning to David for confirmation. He nods. “Are you sure you don’t want us to drive?”

“I think we should walk around a bit. We’ve been cooped up in the castle for a while.”

Keith reattaches his leg with minimal pain. His boot slides back on easily. He’s still wearing Lance’s jacket, and he curls his arms around himself for a second. David hands Lance some money and he shoves it in his jeans pocket.

“We’ll be back soon.” They walk outside, and Keith’s grateful for the open space.

“I’m sorry,” he says as they walk back down to their lions. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I mean, it was kinda dark, but I think you got what it was like up there across pretty well.”

“Lance,” he says, staring out at the ocean, which has turned gray along with the sky. “Your parents didn’t need to know that you almost died. None of them needed to know that.”

“They would have found out eventually. Better to get it all out at once than have to come back to it, right?”

“Why are you okay with this? I just gave your little siblings nightmares for weeks.”

“I think they already dealt with those,” Lance says quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Garrison said there was an accident with a meteor, right? That could mean a lot. We could have gotten squished, or impaled, or died days later. Imagine not knowing for sure if your family died slow or fast. If it hurt, or if it was too quick to. They know I’m alive now, and sure, they know I almost died that one time, but they don’t know about the others, or how bad it really was, only what you told them. So it’s fine.”

Keith pulls the backpack full of memories out of Red. There’s clothes, but he was never one for fashion. Lance was the one with more clothes, and his bag is much bigger.

“Oh shit,” Lance mumbles when they’re back on the sand. He digs through his bag.

“What?”

“I don’t want to explain to everyone that I’m not actually dead after all these years. Aha!” He pulls out the weird alien sunglasses and the hat they got from Xanduar’s moon a couple months ago. “Can’t have them recognizing me.”

With the ‘disguise’ on, he really does look different. At least, different than he did when he was eighteen. There’s a hint of scruff on his jaw that he didn’t get to take care of this morning, and the scars on his jaw and arms scream the opposite of the boy that took so much care of his body.

No one will recognize Keith, so he’s fine leaving himself dressed as is. The walk up to the pizza shop doesn’t take long, and Lance points out little landmarks of where he grew up along the way. The school he went to, the local grocery store that has definitely changed owners, the playground next to the haunted house that everyone dared each other to knock on.

Keith stands back a little as Lance orders their pizza. The shop is small, clearly family owned, but nice. The smells are almost overwhelming. They haven’t had Earth food in so long, and he wonders if it’ll taste as good as he’s been dreaming.

It’s maybe a five minute walk back to the house, and the pizzas smell so good it’s hard for him not to eat it all right now.

“Yo, man, you look like you’re gonna attack the pizza.”

“Smells good.”

“I’ll give you that.”

The family looks relieved to have them back again, and Keith is reminded how uncomfortable their situation is.

Irene pours them both a glass of orange juice from the fridge. He’s sat back down on the couch with the juice and a plate full of pizza. He takes a tentative drink of the juice first. They’ve had plenty of fruit juices around the galaxy, but nothing that tastes like plain, wonderful orange juice. His face must look blissed out, because the rest of the family is smiling at them strangely. Lance has his face stuffed full of pizza next to him and practically moans from the taste.

“Keith,” he says around the pizza, “eat the pizza, you gotta eat it.”

He takes a bite, and then another, and another, until his face probably looks like Lance’s, stuffed full of food that he hasn’t had in over four years. The sauce and the cheese and the softness of the crust, everything tastes so much like home in a way they could never recreate in space.

His face feels wet, and he realizes he’s crying, over pizza, with his mouth full of it. He swallows and laughs.

“It’s so good.”

Lance is in a similar state, openly crying as he keeps eating. Anna sits next to him and rests her head on his shoulder.

“Nothing ever tasted like Earth food,” he says when he finally swallows. “This is the best day of my life.”

They absentmindedly talk about the things they ate in space, the types of aliens they met, the planets they saved. These are happier stories, for the most part, ones to make Lance’s parents proud of their son, at least that’s what Keith is aiming for. Lance keeps trying to get him to shut up with the praise, but he ignores him, keeps talking.

Eventually, it gets late, and it’s a school night, apparently. Lance refuses to let Sammi and Charlie stay home tomorrow, and sends them off to bed. Keith’s getting kind of tired to. It’s been a long day, and he just wants to curl up in his bed on the castle, but that’s not an option anymore.

Lance is talking with his parents in a quiet voice and Keith is half asleep beside him, face pressed into his shoulder. He’s shaken all the way awake and looks around blearily.

“C’mon sleepy head, we’re going to bed.”

He yawns and nods, wishing Lance’s parents and sister a good night before grabbing his bag and following Lance upstairs.

His room is plainer than he was expecting. There’s a couple posters here and there, blue checkered bedsheets, and a dresser. A couple knickknacks, but for the most part it’s very organized.

“Jeez, they really didn’t touch anything.”

He sets his bag down and pulls out pajamas. He slips into them quickly before turning back to Keith. “You okay to sleep here? I know it’s weird and kinda small, but we should fit.”

“Where else would I go?”

“That is an excellent point. Come on, get changed. I know you’re tired.”

He does, disconnecting his leg with a grimace. The bed is squishy, squishier than the ones on the castle, but the comforter looks warm and there’s two pillows, so it’s fine. He lets lance take the spot by the wall and slips into the edge space. He was right about it being warm.

“How was today for you?” Lance asks, eyes lidded.

“A lot. Your family’s so nice to me.”

“I told you. You don’t have anything to worry about here. We’re safe and they like you. Perfect mix.”

“I kind of miss the others.”

“We’ll see them soon. We’ll be back together in like a week, two weeks tops.”

Keith nods and settles into the pillow, curling up next to Lance. He grabs his hand, and lets himself slip into sleep.

\---

The first couple days are good. Keith meets more of Lance’s family after his mom calls everyone over to the house. His grandparents are so friendly, and his cousin wants to talk knives with him. The stories of space are cut down to the basics, no talking about missing limbs or near death experiences this time, and the night goes better.

Lance’s childhood bed is small, but not too much smaller than the beds on the castleship. He’s woken up a few times, confused by the lack of glowing blue surrounding him, but hears Lance’s steady breathing and falls back asleep.

Things are fine until they’re not.

Lance’s extended family has gone back to their homes after making Lance promise not to disappear again. It’s quieter around the house. They still haven’t met back up, no one’s even really checked in with each other, and he’s getting a little anxious.

It was a bad leg day today. Everything he did, it hurt where it didn’t exist. He couldn’t get his brain to realize that the leg was gone, there were no more nerves there. He took a lot of the McClain’s supply of ibuprofen, which was not near as effective as the Altean medicine he’s grown used to.

They close the blinds that night, the moon shining too brightly through the window for them to sleep properly. The bed feels wrong-er today, and Keith goes to bed uncomfortable.

He wakes up and he has no idea where he is.

It’s dark, and the castleship is never dark. If it’s dark, that means something terrible has happened. Lance is asleep next to him, but that doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t either of their beds, which means they’ve been taken somewhere. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, the room looks normal, but that doesn’t mean anything. Outside the door could be something awful. They could be in a hallucination, some druid composed fever dream.

He grabs his knife from the bedside table and swings his legs over the side. If he’s being given a weapon, he’s not questioning it.

When he tries to stand, Keith falls flat on his face with a scarily loud thump. He looks back, and where his left leg should be there’s nothing. A scream lodges itself in his throat and he bites it back. He can’t afford to be loud right now, especially with how loud that thump was.

His leg is gone. Okay. Okay that’s terrifying, along with the fact that he can’t remember where it went. It seems healed too, which is even scarier.

Lance is waking up, slowly, grumbling something about noise, and Keith scoots himself in front of the door, gripping his knife tightly. In the back of his mind he registers pain, but that doesn’t matter right now.

His balance is all off as he braces himself on the floor to keep the door closed from whatever’s out there. Lance has sat up now, rubbing at his eyes. He spots Keith sitting in front of the door.

“Keith?”

He holds a finger up to his lips, motioning for him to be quiet. There’s a noise from behind the door, maybe another door closing, and fear crawls up his spine.

“What’re you doing on the floor?”

“Lance,” he says as quiet as he can. “We’re not on the castle. I don’t know where we are. You have to be quiet.”

Lance’s face softens, and this is no time to be relaxed. What’s he thinking? He gets up and pads over to him, kneeling down next to him.

“We’re not on the castleship anymore, remember? We’re back on Earth, with my parents.”

“No,” he says roughly. “Whatever they made you think, it’s not true. It’s not true. My leg is gone, I don’t know what’s happening, Lance don’t you get it?”

There’s footsteps outside the door and Keith clamps his free hand over Lance’s mouth before he blows their cover. He tightens his hold on the knife and closes his eyes, willing them to keep going.

They pass, and another door shuts. He reopens his eyes. Lance is peeling Keith’s hand back and staring at the knife.

“H-hey, maybe loosen you grip on the knife?”

He narrows his eyes. “We’re somewhere we don’t know, Lance, I’m not letting my guard down.”

“Babe, you lost your leg almost three years ago.”

What? “What? No I-I would remember that.”

Lance grabs something that looks suspiciously like a prosthetic leg, and memories of pain pain _pain_ flood him. He yelps before covering his mouth. That was loud. Too loud. He still doesn’t know where he is.

“We’re at my parent’s house. We got here almost a week ago. Remember? The Garrison kept asking us questions and you stopped answering.”

That sounds, that sounds real. There a faster footsteps now, and he shoves Lance away from the door, thoughts lost, only thinking of keeping him safe. Something bites into his hand, and he does his best not to make any noise, but fails.

“Lance? Keith? Are you two okay?”

That voice, it sounds familiar, but not anyone on the castleship. Maybe it’s their torturer. The door starts to give under his back, and he shoves back as hard as he can. It slams shut.

“Lance?!”

“Mom, I’m fine. Keith- he doesn’t know where he is, I’m trying.”

Mom? Is that his mom? Irene. The name floats into his brain, and he thinks maybe he’s met her before. How would he know? How can he be sure?

“Keith, honey, you’re here at our house, David and Irene’s. We’re Lance’s parents. You’re back on Earth.”

Her accent doesn’t sound like anything he heard in space. There were never any Spanish speaker sounding aliens anywhere they went. Maybe…

Lance presses a hand to his forehead. “Shhh shh shh. I’m right here. We’re back on Earth. We’re back, it’s done. You don’t have to worry about Galra prisons anymore.”

There’s a kiss pressed to his forehead, and the door tries to open again. His fight or flight reflex is stuck somewhere in the middle, and he can’t stop Lance from pulling him out of the way or the woman from opening the door.

Something cold and hot runs down his face, and it’s wet. He looks up at the woman from behind the door as she shuts the offending thing behind her. Her face is gentle, and she looks like Lance, in an odd sort of way. She sits next to them, careful to keep some distance, and his breath hitches.

Lance says something in Spanish, something about him, that he can’t understand, and his fear addled brain thinks that maybe Lance has turned against him, turning him in to keep himself safe. He turns back to Keith, who raises his knife.

“Whoa, Keith, baby calm down.”

“What did you say,” he gravels out. But his eyes lock on the blood on his hand. He’s holding the knife the wrong way, blade digging into his fingers and palm. Pain shoots up his arm, and he drops it with a clatter on the floor. His hand is shaking, bleeding heavily.

“Look at me. Don’t look at your hand, look at me.” Lance is quiet, voice level. He looks at Lance, and he registers that the hot cold wet things on his face are tears. He’s crying. Everything is terrifying and he’s crying. A sob hiccups in his throat and Lance snatches the knife from the floor, sliding it somewhere behind him.

The woman, he knows it’s Irene now, has scooted closer, and he lets both her and Lance wrap their arms around him.

“Mom, can you take us to the hospital? I think he needs stitches.”

She mutters and affirmative. “Let me get my keys and some shoes.”

The door shuts behind her again, and he’s glad that she understands the need to keep things closed. Lance touches his face gently.

“You back with me? You know where you are?”

He nods, looking back down at his hand again. It’s deep, bleeding heavily, and they no longer have direct access to the healing pods. Hospitals mean waiting in pain, and needles, bright lights, uncaring doctors, pain, hospitals mean pain and cold and fear and-

“Shh, look at me. Stop that. You’ll be fine. Do you want the prosthetic back on?”

He nods. He needs control right now, and without a leg, he has none. He needs to be able to run if he needs to, run away away away from wherever they’re going. The pain of reconnecting nerves is dull in the back of his mind, and he keeps staring at Lance. He needs him, needs him not to go, stay with him.

Irene announces her presence before opening the door. It creaks. She helps the two of them up, wraps Keith’s hand in a damp towel, and leads them downstairs to the car. Anna’s awake in the living room, watching them anxiously, and Lance assures her that everything’s fine.

The trip to the hospital keeps him on edge, and when they arrive, he practically clings to Lance.

Irene takes care of paperwork and talking with the receptionist. Lance and Keith sit together in the chairs, Lance’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, whispering quiet things in his hair. Keith’s hand is still shaking and in pain, but it’s a little better now, on the back of his mind. There’s still tears diligently making their way down his face, and he wills himself to stop. These strangers don’t deserve his emotions.

This is nothing like being in Galra custody, he tells himself, clutching Lance’s hand tightly. When he’s finally called back, Lance and Irene accompany him.

It’s bright, sanitary. There’s white light everywhere. The nurse chatters away to them in Spanish, words he can’t understand, and his anxiety hikes back up. She takes his vitals as they wait, face cheerful. Lance translate the important parts.

When the doctor comes, accompanied with needles and the nurse, he tries not to panic. Or punch her in the face.

Her hair is long, dyed bale blond, and her nose is long and thin.

He thinks he might throw up.

She speaks English, and he wonders if it would have been better if he couldn’t understand her.

She’s saying something as she shoots his hand full of numbing agent, and that’s a stark difference. Haggar did what she pleased and wanted him to feel it.

The drag of wire thread through his skin pulls his heart with it every time.

“Oh don’t be so scared,” she says in her gravelly voice. “I’ve had kids younger than you take this like a champ.”

He bites his tongue and refuses to feel anything.

Irene is chatting with the nurse, and he finally looks at a clock. It’s almost four in the morning, and guilt gnaws at his stomach.

“Irene, I’m so sorry.”

“What?”

“It’s so early, I woke you up, I’m sorry.”

Lance rubs his thumb over his knuckles.

“Keith,” Lances mom says. “I promise you it’s fine. Knowing you’re okay is worth it.”

He nods and goes back to not focusing on the drag and pull of his skin under the needle.

When it’s done, he gets a bandage thrown over it, told not to mess with the stiches, clean them or he risks infection.

He couldn’t care less about infection right now.

The first thing he does when they get back to the house is grab a towel and lock the bathroom door behind him. The leg comes off easily, and he leans on the wall as the water turns on.

The hot water burns his skin, and he knows he’ll be bright red by the time he’s out. The soap stings his stitches, but he scrubs his fear away, cleans himself up to face the day.

The shower lasts too long, and when he gets out the heat has made him wobbly legged. But he reattaches his leg, slips his clothes back on, and slinks his way to Lance’s bedroom.

Lance is waiting.

Whatever blood he might’ve gotten on the floor is gone, and Lance has his communicator out, message feature pulled up.

“I told Shiro that you’re calling him today.”

Keith nods, too tired to object, and sits next to him.

“That was scary,” Lance says quietly. “I know it was probably scarier for you, but…”

Keith shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I should have listened.”

“You couldn’t though. You wouldn’t have been able to. What went wrong?”

“It was dark. Really dark. Castle ship was never dark. And the bed was different. Couldn’t figure out where we were.”

“I think we should meet up with the others soon. I know you’re getting twitchy here.”

He’s right. Keith loves it here, but this isn’t his family. His family is Voltron, however cheesy that may sound.

“I think we should get a house.” For everyone, he means. Everyone from the castleship.

“Where?”

“Ocean somewhere. With some forest. Not the desert.”

“Just us?”

“…For everyone off the castleship.”

Lance looks at him.

“It doesn’t feel right. Them not being here doesn’t feel right. I can’t relax until we’re back together.”

“Alright,” Lance says. “Bring it up to Shiro when you talk to him.”

He nods. Lance hands him his own communicator. Keith frowns.

“Right now?”

“I’m leaving, and you’re talking to him. He’s expecting you, so don’t keep him waiting.”

Lance leaves, shutting the door behind him. The early morning sun is peaking its way through the blinds and Keith opens them, communicator held up to his ear, waiting for Shiro to pick up.

There’s a click and then he answers. “Keith?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says quietly, looking out at the sunrise. Hearing Shiro’s voice eases some of the tension out of his body. “I think we need to talk.”

\---

Him and Shiro talk for at least an hour, about the families they’ve been spending time with, how much things are different, the way Keith wants to be around everyone again.

The Garrison wants them back, apparently, just for a short meeting. Keith’s the first person Shiro’s told, planning on calling Hunk later in the day. The Holts already know.

Lance comes back up with food a couple minutes after they get done talking, handing Keith a bowl of cereal. He’s munching on a bagel.

“Garrison wants us to come back.”

Lance frowns. “Why? Didn’t they already drill enough out of us?”

“Something about keeping quiet with the media.”

His nose wrinkles as he finished the bagel. “Lame. We saved the universe, don’t we get any recognition?”

“I don’t want to go either, but we have to. Soon.”

Lance groans, flopping back onto the bed. “Stupid government hating our space alien adventure.”

Keith takes a bite of his cereal before speaking. “At least we’ll get to see everyone.”

“Yeah,” comes his quiet reply. “My mom hopes you’re feeling better.”

He looks down at the threads holding his hand together, and grimaces. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

He stuffs another spoonful of cereal in his mouth so he doesn’t have to say anything. Lance sighs and starts gathering up his things.

“Guess we should probably leave soon.”

Keith hurriedly finishes the rest of the bowl and repacks the few things he’d taken out of his bag. They go downstairs, where the family is getting ready for the day. Irene looks very tired, as does Anna.

“So,” Lance starts, and the room looks at him. “We have to go back up to the Garrison for some lame meeting thing.”

“You’re leaving?” Charlie sounds so sad.

“Yeah, but we’ll be back. Maybe not immediately, we still need to figure out what we’re doing with the rest of the group, but we’ll be back. You’re not losing me again.”

David pulls Lance into a tight hug. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Keith,” Irene says, coming up in front of him. “Your hand isn’t wrapped.”

“Oh,” he looks at his hand. He doesn’t really think he needs to keep it covered-

“Let me help you with that.”

“Irene—”

She pulls him by his good hand into the bathroom and sits him on the toilet. The door shuts behind her.

She’s gentle as she coats the injury in neosporin, gingerly wrapping his palm and fingers.

“I know you love my son very much.”

He swallows and nods.

“And I know he loves you too.”

He’s not really sure what he’s meant to do here, but he whispers a quiet “yes.”

“Lance hasn’t said much about what your past was like before the Garrison, but he’s hinted. And so have you.” She tucks the stray edge of the bandage under the rest of it, in the middle of his wrist. “Don’t feel like you have to keep everything locked inside there.” She taps his chest. “The people around you are happy to help.”

“I… I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

She purses her lips at him, catching his obvious lie. “You have a family here in this house, and you have a family with your teammates from Voltron. Family takes care of each other, no matter what. Do not be afraid to share what you are feeling. I know you are a very private person, but people care about you, Keith. I care about you. I know everyone in this house would agree with me. What happened last night scared me.”

This is about turning the knife on Lance then. “Oh, Mrs. McClain, I am so, so sorry about that. I didn’t- I didn’t mean to turn the knife on him, well, I thought- I mean yes I did, but—”

She smacks him gently on the side of his head and he shuts up. “I told you to call me Irene. You’re not understanding me. I know you would never hurt Lance. What I mean is that you, not knowing where you were, thinking you were unsafe, that’s what scared me. I was scared for you, Keith.”

Oh, she- oh. He’s not used to this. He swallows thickly.

“Please,” she takes his hands in hers. “When you are feeling bad things like that, talk to someone. Don’t let things like that grow. I want you to keep yourself safe while you and Lance are away. Stay healthy. I have no idea what you two must have gone through, but I know my son, and I know that that scar on his chest wasn’t the only time any of you came close to dying.”

Her voice is thick, and Keith is blinking to keep his eyes dry. “I-I’ll do my best,” he says after a moment.

She smiles and pulls him into a hug. “Good. Like David said, don’t be a stranger. Come back whenever you want. You’re welcome in our house any time for any reason. Even if you just want some food, stop in at dinner time and there will always be a place for you here.”

He nods and hugs her back.

Lance is waiting for them when they reemerge, eyebrows raised at the time it took, but thankfully doesn’t say anything. The two of them finish their goodbyes and Sammi and Charlie ask to go with them a couple times, to which Lance says a firm no.

The beach is empty as they walk down it to the cluster of rocks guarding the cave. The tide is low, so Lance’s feet don’t get as wet this time.

Red is happy to see him again, and he takes a moment to let himself breathe in the familiar feeling of her in his mind.

“Sooooo,” Lance says once they’re up in the air. “What’d you and my mom talk about?”

“Some stuff.”

“That’s really interesting.”

“Yup.”

Lance sighs. “Listen, if you want to keep it private, that’s fine. I just know she was really shaken up after this morning.”

He hums. “She just wanted me to know that she cares about me and that you do too, and your whole family and all of Voltron cares about me. And that I don’t have to deal with stuff like last night alone.”

“Well duh,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course she cares about you! You’re one of the people I spent the last four years almost dying with.”

“Yeah, I get that.” He looks down at the wrapping on his hand. “It was nice to hear.”

The rest of the way there is comfortably silent with little bits of chatter thrown in. The Garrison is daunting, and he really, really doesn’t want to go inside, but Lance gives him a little shove through the doorway once they’re there, so there’s no going back.

Somehow, everyone else got there before them, so when they’re directed into the waiting room, many pairs of eyes turn to see them. There’s no time to say hi, because an officer enters behind them, asking everyone to follow him.

Pidge comes up next to Keith and pretty much attaches themself to his side.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

“Your hand’s all wrapped up.” They always were direct.

“Accident,” he mumbles as they turn down unfamiliar halls. He’s never been to this part of the Garrison before.

“What _kind_ of accident?” They won’t drop it until he tells them.

“Grabbed the knife the wrong way when I was half awake at Lance’s house and then held it really tightly for like ten minutes.”

“Jesus,” they breathe out. “Nightmare?”

“Kinda.”

They’re led into a smaller room without any chairs for them to sit in, which Keith thinks is pretty ridiculous. If they’re going to pull all of them from family reunions, they should at least be accommodating. Iverson sits at a desk, eye narrowed.

“Thank you… all for coming here today.” He eyes Coran and Allura and Keith bristles.

“What exactly do you want?” he snaps.

 “I want there to be no mention of this to anyone outside of your families. Should be easy enough for you, Kogane.”

He opens his mouth to yell something just as underhanded back, but Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder. He bites his tongue back harshly.

“That might be more difficult thank you think,” Shiro says icily. “Allura and Coran have clear differences from humans.”

“Are they incapable of leaving Earth?”

“They’re not leaving,” Lance says.

“Earth isn’t ready for the confirmation of alien life in our universe. There’s no reason to upset them with knowledge of an intergalactic war.”

“An intergalactic war that we won!” Pidge is livid at Keith’s side. “You’re saying that we save your sorry ass from alien invasion and we can’t even keep our friends here with us?”

“Now number five,” Coran comes up beside them. “I’m sure there’s some way this can be worked around.”

“Oh yes.” Allura’s voice is cold and regal. “I’m certain we can come to some sort of agreement. If us saving the universe isn’t enough for you, one of our many allies would be willing to vouch for us.”

The threat is clear, and Iverson somehow sits up even straighter than before. “I see.”

“You covered up our capture by slandering Shiro’s name,” Matt says idly as he leans on the wall next to his dad. He’s not even looking at Iverson as he talks, eyes trained at his fingernails as he picks at them. “I’m sure the media would have a field day knowing that.”

“I was afraid you all would do this. Which is why we have a counter argument.”

Keith crosses his arms.

The guard next to Iverson picks up a stack of papers and hands them out around the room. He looks down at his, and he’s pretty sure his eyes bug out of his face. That is a lot of zeros.

“For your service in keeping us and the rest of the universe safe, we’ll give you each a certain sum of money and reinstate your identities as living citizens of Earth.”

“Each?” Lance’s voice is weak beside him.

“We will also be speaking with your relatives to ensure no one outside of the family knows of the existence of alien life and this level of space travel. They will also receive a sum of money.”

Keith feels a little lightheaded. He’s never seen this many zeros in his life. But the idea of existing in a system again gnaws at his stomach.

“What—,” his voice cracks a little. “What do my records say I am?”

“What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t enrolled in the Garrison when you told everyone these three were dead. Am I alive in your records?”

“No,” Iverson says slowly. “We saw you on the security cameras and included you in the deceased just for good measure, why?”

“Can I opt out of getting my identity back?”

“You want to live undocumented?”

“Yeah.”

“I assume you still want your cut of the money?”

He nods slowly. Lance is giving him a weird look.

“Fine then. Makes my life easier. The rest of you I want to follow General Robins up to get yourselves some identification.”

He turns to follow after the rest of them. “Kogane, I’d like you to stay for a minute.”

Keith stops stiffly and turns back around. “And why should I do that?”

“I don’t really care if you do or don’t, I just want to ask some questions.”

Lance is trailing behind, trying to see if he needs to intervene. Keith gives him a soft look and waves his hand. “I’m good. Go get your picture taken or whatever they’re making you do to get a legal name again.”

He leaves, reluctantly. Keith leans against the door when it closes, kicking out his prosthetic to give it some movement. “Yes?”

“Any reason you don’t want your identification back?”

He shrugs. “Don’t like the idea of people being able to find me whenever they want.”

“Jesus,” Iverson laughs. “You’re a living stereotype.”

“Not according to your records.”

“I guess you’re right. Now, we’re setting up accounts for the others to put their money in, but seeing as you won’t have any identification, what exactly do you want me to do with yours?”

“Put it with Lance’s,” he says. “Easier that way.”

Iverson raises an eyebrow at him and he shifts uncomfortably.

“Am I free to go now?”

“Sure. One last question. You still the best pilot up there?”

“Nah,” he says with a grin. “That’s Lance.”

He walks out on his shocked face and makes his way back down to the waiting room. It’s quiet, empty, and he drapes himself over one of the couches.

It’s a while before anyone else comes down, but Hunk is the first, settling in a chair.

“No ID?”

“Don’t like being tracked.”

“Hmm. It kind of makes buying a place hard, though.”

“About that. How do you feel about getting a house with everyone? Something big, by an ocean and a forest.”

“Why not to desert?”

“I spent enough time in the desert. And the ocean was just so… good when we went to see Lance’s family.”

“How was that, by the way?”

“Really good. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”

“Yeah, they’re like that.”

“What about you?”

“It was great! Celia’s so much bigger. She’s almost as tall as me.”

Keith smiles and pulls his legs up. Hunk eyes the bandage on his hand. “Pidge said you had an accident?”

“Yeah…” He presses his fingers where he knows the cut is. “I woke up and couldn’t figure out where I was, and grabbed the wrong end of my knife. I even forgot about the leg.”

“Oh geez,” Hunk says sympathetically. “There were a few scares, but nothing like that.”

“I raised the knife on Lance before I knew it was facing the wrong way. Thought his mom was some Galra torturer and Lance was selling me out to save himself or something fucked up like that.”

“You’re not going to hurt him,” Hunk says calmly.

“But what if I do? What if I don’t recognize him and attack? His mom trusts me, but I wouldn’t if I was her.”

“You would die before you hurt Lance. Think back. Would you have used the knife on Lance?”

He tries to think, what he felt in his fear hazed brain. He was using the knife as a threat, but not a serious one. He wouldn’t have actually used it on him.

“No.”

“Exactly. So everything’s fine. You wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”

He nods, tips his head back. The others trickle in slowly one after the other, and Lance rests his head on Keith’s shoulder, lamenting about his picture. It isn’t the most flattering photo of Lance ever, but it’s not as bad as he thinks.

Keith tells the others his idea for the house, someplace for all of them to live. Pidge starts house hunting almost immediately, whipping their laptop seemingly out of nowhere. Them and Keith shoot ideas off each other for locations. No close by neighbors, near the ocean, it doesn’t have to be the prettiest house, which Lance and Allura reject immediately. There are some options up in the north-west. Right next to the border between Washington and Canada.

Keith and Lance want beach space, and Shiro and Matt just want space. Pidge and Hunk are excited by the prospect of forest, while Coran and Allura are excited for “Authentic Human Living.” Sam and Colleen just want some peace and quiet for once.

“Okay, there’s this one. It’s this big old Victorian house that looks pretty isolated. It’s got a direct path down to the beach and is surrounded by trees. Someone was using it as like a getaway home but no one wanted it because of how secluded it was.”

“How many bedrooms?”

“More than enough.”

“Okay, but is there a town nearby?”

“Yeah there’s a town,” Pidge points it out to Lance on the map. “It’s pretty small, but it’s only like a ten minute drive. It’s not a tourist town, I don’t think. The closest city’s about an hour away.”

“This looks pretty perfect,” Shiro says, looking at the pictures of the inside.

“I mean, obviously we’d need to redecorate a bit, but that shouldn’t be too hard.”

“We can handle buying the house,” Sam says. “I know none of you have ever bought a house before, and it can be a little tricky.”

“A least we won’t need a mortgage this time,” Colleen jokes. “It’ll be nice to be away from all of this.”

“That means we need to pack!” Matt says suddenly. “Oh my god we get to take our actual stuff with us this time.”

“Guess we’re visiting our families really soon after all.”

Keith frowns. “Did you guys not bring your bags with you?”

“Well yeah,” Hunk says. “But we have to get the stuff we didn’t have in space with us. Family stuff.”

“Oh.”

“We can stop by your shack too, Mullet,” Lance says affectionately.

“It’s not a mullet anymore, _mullet._ ” Lance’s hair is getting a little long in the back, and he gasps offendedly, covering up his hair.

“As if I would ever stoop so low.”

“Alright, calm down,” Shiro puts an arm between them and Keith snorts. “We should probably move fast so no one ends up taking the house.”

“Don’t think that’ll be a problem. There’s like zero pins on this thing. No one is interested.”

“Still, we don’t want to chance it. I’ll see everyone up there.”

“You don’t have to use your ‘Mighty Leader’ voice on us when we’re back on Earth, Takashi.” Matt looks amused. “Nothing’s that serious anymore.”

Shiro freezes, fishing around for words before shutting his mouth and nodding. Oh, Keith thinks. Interesting.

“Hey,” Lance says, tugging on his arm a bit. “Let’s go. I didn’t get a chance to check out all the stuff you had in the shack the last time we were there because of all the magical destiny stuff we were doing.”

Keith signals their goodbye to the others as he follows Lance out of the Garrison. He considers walking to his old house, but Lance didn’t spend a year in the desert and he doesn’t want to spend that much time here either. Lance seems to catch his mood.

“Why don’t we take Blue? She’s bigger, so if you’ve got stuff it’ll fit easier.”

He doesn’t say that there’s nothing he really wants from that place, but he nods and follows him into Blue anyway. The ride there is quiet, heavy, and he wonders exactly what Lance is expecting it to be like.

He’s happy to see that the tree is still there. He was lucky that the shack was in the only green spot he found. He can still see the city skyline, but it’s gotten closer. Lance lands them down in the grassy patch and he steps out, looking around.

When Keith gets up to the door, he hesitates. Something feels wrong and he can’t place it. Looking at the door closer, he sees that it’s open, just slightly, imprints in the wood near the handle. He pulls his knife out and walks in.

He hears Lance suck in a breath behind him as he stares at the remains of his old home. Things are scattered, rummaged through. The cinderblock table is half on the floor, books practically ripped up underneath. The entire corkboard is gone, all of the effort he put into find Blue erased.

Something numb settles in his chest as he sheathes the knife. He picks up a piece of paper from the floor, staring at the crumpled drawing of the blue lion in his hand.

Shouting, he slams the side his fist into the wall next to him.

Lance is trying to clean up the mess around him, sorting papers and books and blankets, but it’s no use. The Garrison ripped through everything, and nothing he might have wanted to keep is left.

Except…

He turns, going to the shelf he used to store important things, and looks. It’s not on the shelf, which he assumed, but buried under a pile of books he finds it.

His dad’s old photo album.

Keith flips it open, staring at his dad’s smiling face. It’s been a long time since he’s looked at these. He’s featured in a lot of them, little baby Keith, doing little baby things. He pulls out a picture of him and his dad to hand to Lance, and another picture falls out from behind it.

He bends down to pick it up and freezes. He’s never seen that picture.

It’s a woman, but she’s definitely not human. Light purple fur covers her face, and her eyes are golden, looking somewhere behind the camera. Her ears are fanned away from her head, and she looks happy.

This is his mom.

Lance comes up behind him, papers piled in his arms, and almost drops them all over the floor again. He sets them down on the couch he used for a bed and comes back, pulling the picture from his hand.

“Is this your mom?”

“I… I think so.”

This spurs him to start pulling the rest of the pictures out of the album. Whatever order they were in before doesn’t matter anymore. He needs more pictures, he needs more proof.

There’s one behind almost every picture, ones of just her, ones of her and his dad. Ones of them all together. He finds a picture of her nuzzling his tiny baby face and closes his eyes to hold back tears. Lance’s arm is around his shoulder in silent support.

Eventually, he’s sorted through them all, and he wonders what happened. There’s no indication that she left, just the fact that there are way more pictures of him and his dad than him and his mom. He tries hard to remember anything about her, but there’s nothing, not even a hint of a voice.

“Hey,” Lance says gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, gathering up all the pictures and shoving them back in the photo album. He pockets the one of him and her. “Let’s go get your stuff.”

Keith stands and abruptly remembers that everything else in the house is trashed. He swallows harshly and walks out, not waiting to see if Lance is following. His hands are shaking as he holds the album in them, walking quickly back to Blue. She’s open, waiting.

He doesn’t say goodbye to his shack in the desert.

\---

They don’t spend much time at the McClain house this time, just a few hours for Lance to gather up some childhood memories before they’re gone again. They’re in Washington not much later, meeting up with Pidge and Matt while their parents start things with the seller.

“How was the shack?” They’re sitting together in a little coffee shop, because all of them but Lance practically need caffeine drips to function.

“Tore up. Garrison came through and took anything that could have led to Blue.”

“Lame,” Matt says. “Let the world find what it wants.”

“I…” Keith takes a big drink of his coffee and pulls the picture from his pocket, setting it between Matt and Pidge. “I found pictures of my mom in my dad’s old photo album.”

“Holy shit.” Pidge snatches up the picture, bringing it close to their face. “This is your mom?”

“I don’t know who else it would be.”

“She’s pretty,” they say, handing it off to Matt. “That’s baby you?”

“Isn’t he adorable?” Lance knocks his shoulder. “He was a super cute baby.”

“Everyone’s a cute baby.”

“Not true,” Matt says, analyzing the woman in the photo. “Pidge was a terrifying baby.”

“Accurate,” they say. “I looked like a gremlin.”

“I want picture evidence.”

Pidge digs out their phone and pulls up a picture. Lance recoils. “Jesus Christ Pidge what did your mom eat?”

“Mom and dad thought they were the cutest thing,” Matt says, looking up from the picture. He hands it back to Keith. “You look like her.”

He guesses he’s right, because he never looked that much like his dad. “Thanks.”

Pidge’s phone buzzes, and the open the message. “Oh hey, Hunk and Shiro are here.”

The doorbell rings and they walk in, making their way over to the big booth they’ve occupied.

“Hey,” Shiro says as he sits next to Matt. “How’s the house going?”

“Dad says the guy really wants to sell it, so things are going pretty fast.”

“How was your dessert house?” Hunk asks as he sits next to Lance. “We never thanked you for letting us stay there that night.”

“It’s fine, we wouldn’t have ended up in space together if I hadn’t.” He pulls the picture back out and slides it to their end of the table. “The Garrison fucked everything up inside, but I found some hidden pictures of who I’m pretty sure is my mom in my dad’s photo album.”

Shiro stares down at the picture with a look of shock, and then looks at Keith. He averts his eyes from Shiro’s gaze, uncomfortable with the attention. Hunk holds the picture up, staring at it in the light.

“She’s very purple.”

Keith snorts out a laugh, and then another, until he’s trying to hold back his laughs in the middle of this tiny, unknown coffee shop. Something stings his eyes, and he ducks his head, covering his mouth with a hand. His breath hitches and he bites his tongue. Lance’s hand takes his free one under the table and squeezes. The wrappings on his hand scratch at his face and he takes a couple deep breaths before putting his head back up. Everyone is pointedly not looking at him, which he appreciates, and Hunk hands him the picture back.

“So,” Lance starts awkwardly. “How’s Earth for you guys?”

This launches Matt into a story about how Pidge jacked all his shit when he ‘died,’ which Pidge completely disagrees with. Shiro tells them that his mom literally slammed the door in his face and yelled that she wouldn’t be dealing with any ghost business that day. Hunk talks about how his moms literally picked him up and spun him around before his sister practically scaled him to get to his shoulders.

The atmosphere lightens, and Hunk and Shiro order themselves some drinks. They’re there for a couple more hours, chatting about their families, before Matt gets a call from his mom, telling them they’re good to come up to the house.

The house, incidentally, is very full of furniture. He guesses the old owner just wanted to get rid of everything. It’s an… interesting aesthetic. Very rustic north woods, which to be fair, they are actually in the rustic north woods. There’s a lot of red plaid and flannel.

Keith spares a glance at Pidge, and their face is a little twisted up. “We’re remodeling tomorrow,” they say flatly.

The house is big, bigger than any Earth house he’s ever been in. There’s a lot of rooms, too many beds, but only a handful of bathrooms. Him and Lance take an upstairs room with a view of the ocean. He opens the window and breathes in cool salty air, and he thinks he can like it here.

Lance has started putting stuff away, decorating, making their room _theirs_ , and Keith curls himself up on the bed with the photo album. He sorts through the pictures by the dates written on the back. Some of the ones he’d grown up with must have been taken by his mom, because they exist at the same times as ones of hers, and who else would they trust to know?

The picture in his pocket isn’t near the beginning. There’s plenty of pictures of his mom and dad together before he was ever born. Pictures of her bundled up in weird ways so they could go out in public, pictures of her eating food, pictures of his dad laughing behind his hand. They’re all so casual and it’s strange. He’s never seen his parents like this. He hasn’t seen his dad in real life since he was six. He has no memory of his mother. They’re enigmas in the back of his mind, and while he vaguely loathes them, he prays that in some way they’re proud of him.

“This red flannel is disgusting and tacky, and tomorrow we’re replacing it,” Lance says as he sits next to him, picking up a picture of his mom and dad. He looks at it for a minute before setting it back down.

“Let’s go check out the rest of the house.”

He practically drags Keith off the bed, pulling him through the door and into the hall. They pass Matt, who’s set up in one of the rooms down the hall from them, and Shiro, who’s room is right next to Matt’s. The stairs are slippery and they definitely almost fall down them as they go to check out where the rest of them have ended up. Hunk’s in the kitchen, fiddling around with food that’s seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and Pidge is already working on some device in the middle of the kitchen table.

“Wifi,” is the only explanation they give.

Sam and Colleen seem set on hanging up every embarrassing baby picture of their children that they can. Allura and Coran are trying to decide whether or not it would be treasonous to Earth if they burned the fake moose head hanging above the fireplace.

It’s cold outside, but Keith doesn’t care. He stares up at the house they now inhabit, green paint almost making it blend in with the trees surrounding it. Lance is halfway to the beach, yelling for Keith to follow him.

The water is freezing when he makes it down there, and he jumps back from it when it hits his feet.

“It’s cold!”

“Uh, duh?” Lance has his pants rolled up, standing up to the middle of his shins in the water. “It’s March!”

He tentatively sticks his foot back in and shivers. He’ll let Lance have fun in the water. For now, he’ll look around.

There’s birds, seagulls he thinks, flying around and picking at things in the sand. He joins them, sifting through the rocks and shells he finds. He pockets a couple of them to put in their room later.

“Hey,” Lance calls after a while. “I think dinner’s gonna be ready soon. We should go back in.”

“I’ll be in in a minute,” he says.

Lance trudge back up the little path to their house and Keith looks out at the ocean.

It’s quiet here.

He likes it.

\---

The next day they pile into the Holt family car to go and find some décor that actually fits them.

Currently, they’re in the paint section of some department store. Pidge has latched onto this terrible green color for their room, and Lance is trying to get Keith to pick between the grey or the purple.

“Which one to you like?” He holds up the sample papers. “The grey offers more choices stylistically for the rest of our room, but the mauve is so soft looking.”

Keith’s a little overwhelmed by this. He’s never had the opportunity to decorate a room how he likes. The closest he got was the shack, and then he was a poor dropout and the walls were wooden.

“Uh,” he looks between the two. He has no idea which one Lance is leaning more towards. “Um…”

“Should we ask Allura?”

He nods, and Lance turns around. Allura and Coran have hats on to cover up their ears. The markings on their face could be played off as eccentric makeup.

“Hey Lura, grey or purple?”

“Grey,” she says without missing a beat. “It leaves you with more options for the rest of your room.”

“Grey it is!”

Allura has latched onto this sparkly star shaped lamp, and refuses to let it go. Coran is very taken with the idea of suspenders and currently has on three pairs.

“Keith and I are gonna go find some bed stuff,” Lance calls to the rest of the group. Keith pushes the cart they’ve grabbed and follows after him as they wind through aisles.

“So, the mattress is really nice, but those pillows were not. They’re too lumpy.” Lance pulls a couple pillows out of the cage they’re in and hands them to Keith. “Which one feels good for you?”

He squishes them all, and the one in the middle with the blue tag is firm but still gives under his hand. “This one.”

“Awesome. I’m more of a yellow tag pillow man myself. How many are we getting?”

He furrows his brow. “One each?”

“Live a little. I know resources were a little slim on the castle, and those beds were really tiny, but how many pillows?”

“Two?”

“Okay, minimalist. You get two, I’m getting three. I want it to feel like my head is resting on clouds.”

The five pillows end up squished into the cart as they move onto bedsheets. Keith’s only real opinion on the matter is that he wants it to be soft.

Lance pulls this comforter that looks like it belongs in the kid’s section. It’s got aliens in tiny little spaceships flying through stars. Lance is grinning.

“We’re getting this.”

“That’s literally the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I want it.”

It goes in next to all the pillows. He gets plain blue bedsheets and stuff those in too.

“Okay, bed is done, onto walls.”

The get a couple posters, this weird felt dinosaur head that hangs on the wall, and some nails. Lance holds up a couple of packages of glow in the dark stars and some Christmas lights.

“You said that the dark messes you up, so I figured we should do something about it. Stars or lights?”

“Lance—”

“Think about what my mom said. You don’t have to deal with this stuff by yourself. If the lights help you sleep at night, we’ll have lights. Now, stars, or lights?”

They end up getting both, because Keith can’t decide.

Lance makes them get some clothes, because everyone needs new underwear and Keith has practically zero clothes of his own. He tries to grab only the basics, but Lance pushes him for jackets, nicer shirts, pajamas that aren’t just the shirt he wore that day and his underwear.

“You are the stingiest shopper I’ve ever met.”

“I just don’t think we need all of this stuff.”

“What, clothes? Bed sheets?”

“We have all of that stuff at the house.”

“Yeah, but it’s old and plaid.”

“And?”

“And? Keith, we’re living in practically a mansion by the ocean, you have to let yourself live a little. Just because we have more than one pillow doesn’t mean we’re wasting money. It means we’re going to be comfortable. We can be comfortable here. You don’t have to worry so much.”

He relents, and they end up buying all the stuff in their cart.

The rest of the day is spent back at home, painting walls and rearranging furniture. Keith prefers the bed pushed up against the wall, and Lance doesn’t argue. The stars go on the ceiling and the lights are strung up along the walls. Pidge exclaims that they’ve got the wifi up and running, attached to some actual provider’s satellite.

The bed is soft when he sinks into it that night, and the lights in the room help him sleep easier.

\---

A week or so later, Pidge, Matt, and Keith are down at the beach. They’d enlisted Keith to help them explore and see if there were any hidden caves.

“Hello!” There’s and unfamiliar group of people on the beach waving at them. “You must be the new family that just moved in!”

Keith crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. “And if we are?”

They falter, smiles twitching down just a tick. Matt takes over.

“Sorry! Not used to new people. I’m Matt, the grumpy one is Keith, and shorty over there is Pidge.”

“I’m not even that short anymore!”

“Coran still calls you Number Five, so you’re shorty!” Matt yells over his shoulder before turning back to the family. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. I’m Jessie, this is my wife, Alice, and our son, Carter.”

Matt shakes Jessie’s hand and she smiles. “When I heard Bill was actually selling the place, I was a little shocked. No one’s been interested in this house for a while.”

“Well,” Matt says, shrugging his shoulder. “It’s a big place. We’re a pretty big group, lots of family dynamics happening. This house had pretty much everything we wanted.”

“Yeah,” Pidge finally walks over. “There’s enough rooms, it’s by the ocean, in the woods, pretty secluded. This one,” they nudge Keith, who shoots them a look, “was super happy about it.”

“No, I was just surprised it actually existed. Lance was super happy about it.”

“How many of you are there?” Carter asks. He small, maybe ten? Keith can’t tell.

“Well let’s see,” Matt holds out his hands to count on his fingers. “There us two and our parents, which makes four. Keith, Lance, Hunk, and Shiro add it up to eight, and then there’s Allura and Coran, which makes it all together ten.”

Alice and Jessie’s eyes are big, and Carter looks pretty impressed. “Is there anyone my age?”

“Nope,” Pidge says. “I’m the closest. How old are you?”

“Eleven,” he say, holding himself up taller.

“Well hey! Seven more years and you’ll be my age.”

“Are you all related?” Alice asks.

“Oh god no,” Matt says. “Me and Pidge and my parents are the only ones actually related. We all just live together, kind of like a big family. Keith and Lance are dating, but other than that, we’re all just there together.”

“Well,” Jessies says, having recovered from the number of people in their house. “I hope you like it up here! We’re a ways down the hill, but if you and the rest of your family unit want to come down to meet, please do! We’d love to get to know you.”

Keith doubts that, but Matt smiles and thanks them anyway. He finally notices that Alice is holding a bag as she hands it to them.

“Consider this a welcoming gift.” Keith opens it up and finds a cake, wrapped up in plastic wrap. “Don’t worry about the dish, it’s an old one.”

“Thanks,” Keith mumbles, and the three strangers smile at him.

“Well, we won’t hold you up too long. Like I said, don’t be a stranger. We’ll have you for dinner sometime.”

They leave, walking back down the beach. Matt takes the cake from Keith, who frowns at him.

“Where the hell did that come from?”

“What?”

“Your amazing people skills.”

“Oh don’t be fooled,” Pidge says, leading them back up to the house. “He’s terrible with people, he’s just really good at acting like he’s not.”

“I’ll agree with that.”

They cut they cake once they’re inside. It’s strawberry, which Keith thinks is a little strange for a welcoming gift, but it’s good, so he eats it.

Hunk thinks they have to make something back, and sets to work going through recipes, trying to find the perfect one for their family.

Neighbors aren’t so bad, Keith tells himself. He needs to get used to different people. Maybe this is how he does it. By interacting with their very nice neighbors, getting himself back in the world. He can’t immediately hate everyone anymore.

He’ll work on it.

\---

It’s the middle of the night, and Lance is asleep next to him, breathing steady. He’s a direct contrast of Keith, who’s sitting up trying to keep his breathing under control. He needs- something. He’s not sure what.

He wants to hurt.

Not good.

He shakily climbs over the end edge of the bed and attaches his prosthetic. He tries to focus on the pain, but it doesn’t last long enough. He needs something sharp. Something- something-

Irene’s voice floats into his head, telling him to take care of himself, and fuck he wants to listen, but everything is so much in his head right now, and he needs to hurt, and it needs to be sharp.

He grabs his knife the right way this time and locks himself in their bathroom. Lance doesn’t need to know about this, so he does it in places easy to hide. The tops of his thighs, low on his hips, and presses toilet paper down on them until he stops bleeding.

The need to hurt is still there, but he’s craving people now too, and he can’t go to Lance like this, bleeding and clingy.

He needs Shiro.

Shiro always knew how to handle his self destructive tendencies, and he slides his way down the hall to his room. The light is showing under the door, which means he’s awake, which means this is okay.

He doesn’t knock, just pushes open the door with a wobbly hand.

Matt is there, holding Shiro’s shoulders, and his face is very, very close to his. No, not close, touching. Not touching.

They’re kissing.

Oh.

Oh.

Shiro and Matt-

Something worse than the shaky desperate to hurt feeling takes over his brain, and he thinks it might be betrayal. For some stupid reason.

They part, wide eyed, staring at Keith, and Keith slams the door shut and sinks back into the hallway wall.

His nails find the fresh cuts, and he scratches desperately, needing to feel something different than the sick spinny he’s feeling right now.

The door opens and Shiro’s there, shuffling him into his room and closing the door.

“Is he okay?” Matt’s voice is muffled.

“I don’t know.” Shiro presses his arm to Keith’s forehead before pulling his fingers away from his hips. There’s blood under his fingernails and he feels numb.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Keith’s voice is weak even to his own ears. He assumed if Shiro started dating someone, he’d tell him first. Maybe Matt first, but he’s dating Matt, so Keith’s next in line.

“We’ll talk about that in a minute. What’s wrong? Why are you bleeding?”

“Can’t sleep. My head- I wanna hurt.” He sounds like a five year old, but it doesn’t matter, because Shiro is asking Matt for the blanket and now he’s all wrapped up in it and pulled close to Shiro’s chest.

“Why not Lance?”

“He deals with my shit too much, I can’t put this on him too.”

Matt sits on his other side, and that’s fine. It’s not that he doesn’t like Matt. Matt’s good, he’s fun, he’s good for Shiro. He just wanted to know.

He’s feels claustrophobic in an okay way, pressed between two people and wrapped up in a blanket. He’s pathetic and he knows it. Shiro and Matt know it. And now Matt gets to join the terribly exclusive club, who’s only member is Shiro, that knows he hurts himself.

It’s a while before the numb tingly feeling leaves his lips and he’s in control of his wants again. Shiro’s rubbing up and down his arm through the blanket and Matt just stays pressed to his side.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” he says again, more in control of himself now.

Shiro looks him over and seems to deem him present enough to have this conversation. “It’s not that I didn’t want to, we just wanted to have some time to get used to it before telling people.”

“How long?”

“Just before we came back to Earth, officially.”

That’s almost two months, officially, which means things were happening beforehand. They’re all adults, and he doesn’t know why it hurts so much that he didn’t know, but it does. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe, but it catches in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says quietly. “I should have told you.”

“I shouldn’t be upset,” Keith says, because it’s true.

“Yeah, well, you’re a little messed up. We all are. We’re gonna get upset over some pretty small shit sometimes. We just have to get used to it.” Matt squeezes his shoulder.

“Yeah…”

“Do you want me to stay or leave? Because I get it if you don’t want me here right now.”

“What?” Keith’s confused. “Why wouldn’t I want you here?”

“Uh, I’m dating your pseudo brother and we didn’t tell you for two months? You seemed pretty put out by it.”

“I’m not mad at you.” Keith averts his eyes. “Just, weirdly betrayed. I figured other than you, I’d be the first person Shiro would go to for stuff like this.”

“You are,” Shiro says. “We were going to say something soon. It’s getting hard to keep it a secret. I would have told you first.”

Keith nods.

“Hey, look at you. Talking through your feelings,” Matt says, grinning. “You doing better already.”

Huh. Maybe he is.

“Are you okay though? No more going to hurt yourself? Because let’s be real, that urge fucking sucks, because it’s like, itchy. But not? It just doesn’t like being ignored.”

Keith gives Matt a look, because he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. He won’t ask, but he’ll assume.

“Yeah, I’m good. Go it all out I guess.”

“Good,” they both say.

“Yeah,” he says, sinking deeper between them. “Yeah.”

\---

Lance finds him down by the ocean, feet, stretched into the water. He came down here to clear his head a few hours ago, think through some things, and he must have been gone too long.

“Hunk made mashed potatoes, and this household is vicious about their mashed potatoes,” is how Lance starts, sitting next to him.

“I’ll come in soon. Just thinking.”

“What about?”

“You know how freaked out I was to come back to Earth?”

“Yeah, you were afraid we were all gonna forget about you and go back to our normal lives. You were totally wring, by the way.”

“Yeah. I’m glad I was wrong.”

“That’s not what you were thinking about though.”

“No,” he says quietly.

“Then what?”

“It’s… We’re a family. And you guys might have your actual, blood family that lives far away, but we’re a family.”

“’Course we are. We’re a space family, can’t split us up.”

“It’s bad to say, but I’m so glad we went through all that shit up there to get here.”

“It’s not bad,” Lance says quietly. “It’s not. I would have never gotten to know any of you as well as I do now without it. I wouldn’t live with the best space family ever without all the shit we went through up there.”

“I like it here,” Keith says, resting his head on Lance’s shoulder. “Feels like a home.”

“Yeah?” Lance sounds amused. “I’m glad. You deserve one of those.”

“It’s different from a house. It’s better, warmer.”

They’re quiet for a minute, watching as the sun dips lower into the ocean.

“Come on,” Lance says, pulling them both up. “Let’s go get some mashed potatoes.”

Keith thinks he can manage that.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!  
> it's been a minute since i posted anything. part of that is because I accidentally deleted all my WIPs and only got 1 and 1/2 back. mostly its because im very lazy and it was the end o0f the semester.  
> ive been working on this for a while, and i hope yall liked it because it just kept getting bigger.


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